SoupsLes Soupes et Potages

Melt the butter with the oil in a heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onions, sugar and the half-teaspoon of salt; the salt draws out water early and speeds the whole process. Stir to coat.

Cook uncovered, stirring every few minutes, for 45–50 minutes total. For the first 15 minutes they will soften and turn translucent; for the next 30 they will slowly collapse and colour, first pale gold, then a deep, even mahogany. Lower the heat if they threaten to catch, and scrape up any browning from the base each time — that browning is flavour, not a mistake.

Sprinkle the flour over and stir for two minutes to cook out the raw taste and lightly thicken. Pour in the wine, scraping the base hard to lift every last brown fleck, and let it bubble down by half.

Add the hot stock, bay and thyme. Bring to a simmer, partially cover, and cook gently for 25 minutes. Taste and season — the onions carry most of the salt already, so add it cautiously.

Heat the grill. Ladle the soup into flameproof bowls, float a slice or two of dried baguette on top of each, and heap the cheese generously over the bread, letting a little fall into the broth at the edges.

Grill until the cheese is fully melted and blistered dark in patches, 3–5 minutes, watching throughout. Serve at once — the bowls will be very hot.

Melt the butter in a pot over low heat. Add the leeks and onion with a pinch of salt and sweat, covered, for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice, until soft and glassy but not coloured — any browning here will muddy the soup's clean, pale colour.

Add the potatoes and stock. Bring to a simmer, partially cover, and cook gently for 25 minutes until the potato collapses when pressed against the side of the pot with a spoon.

Purée by forcing the solids and enough liquid through a sieve, working in batches, using the back of a ladle or wooden spoon to push through everything but the toughest fibre. Stir the purée back into the remaining liquid.

Return to a low heat, thin with a little more stock or water if it is thicker than a light cream, and season carefully — potato absorbs salt readily. Ladle into bowls and finish with chives.

Make the Potage Parmentier through to the sieving stage, using a slightly higher proportion of stock so the base is a shade thinner than you would serve it hot — chilling and cream both thicken it further.

While the soup is still warm, stir in the cream and a squeeze of lemon juice; the acid brightens what cold temperatures otherwise mute. Taste and season — cold food needs noticeably more salt than the same dish served hot, since chilling dulls the palate's sense of it.

Cool to room temperature, then cover and chill for at least four hours, ideally overnight. Do not add hot soup directly to the fridge; cool it in a wide bowl set inside a larger bowl of iced water first, stirring occasionally, so it does not sit at a dangerous temperature for long nor warm the fridge around it.

Taste again once fully cold and adjust the seasoning a final time. Serve in chilled bowls, with a thread of cream swirled across the top and a scatter of chives.

Warm the two tablespoons of oil in a pot over medium heat. Add the onion and carrots and cook for 5 minutes until starting to soften. Add the potatoes, courgettes and tomatoes and stir a further two minutes.

Pour in the water or stock, bring to a simmer, and cook gently for 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender but still holding their shape — this is a soup you eat with a fork as much as a spoon.

Add the green beans, the tinned haricots and the pasta. Simmer a further 10–12 minutes until the pasta is cooked and the beans are heated through. Season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile make the pistou. Crush the garlic to a paste with a pinch of coarse salt using the flat of a knife blade, as in Knife Skills. Chop the basil very fine, then work it with the garlic paste in a bowl using the back of a wooden spoon, gradually adding the four tablespoons of olive oil and the cheese, until it becomes a thick, fragrant, spoonable paste.

Ladle the soup into bowls and let each diner stir a generous spoonful of pistou through their own bowl at the table — this is traditional, and it keeps the basil's aroma vivid rather than dulled by cooking.

Melt half the butter in a heavy pot over medium heat. Sweat the onion for 5 minutes until soft, then add the mushrooms and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8–10 minutes until they have released their liquid and it has mostly boiled away, leaving them deeply savoury and slightly caramelised at the edges.

Push the mushrooms to one side, add the remaining butter to the cleared space, and once melted stir in the flour to make a roux with the fat. Cook for two minutes, stirring, until it smells nutty rather than raw, then work the mushrooms back through it.

Off the heat, whisk in the hot stock gradually, a ladle at a time, beating out lumps after each addition, until fully smooth. Return to the heat and simmer gently, stirring often, for 15 minutes until lightly thickened.

Reserve a few slices of the best-looking mushroom for garnish, then purée the rest by pushing it through a sieve with the back of a ladle, in batches, back into a clean pot.

Make the liaison: whisk the cream and egg yolks together in a bowl. Ladle a little of the hot soup into this mixture, whisking constantly, to warm it gradually — this is called tempering and stops the yolks scrambling. Repeat with a second ladle, then pour the warmed mixture back into the pot.

Set over the lowest possible heat and stir constantly with a wooden spoon for 3–4 minutes until the soup visibly thickens a shade more and coats the spoon more heavily. Do not let it approach a simmer from this point — a liaison-thickened soup curdles at close to the same temperature an egg does.

Add the lemon juice, adjust seasoning, and serve at once with the reserved mushroom slices scattered on top.

Melt the butter in a pot over low heat, add the onion and sweat 5 minutes until soft and translucent. Add the potato and stock, bring to a simmer, and cook 15 minutes until the potato is fully tender.

Reserve a small handful of the best watercress leaves for garnish. Add the rest to the pot and cook for exactly 2 minutes, no longer — just until it wilts and turns a deep, glossy green.

Purée at once by forcing everything through a sieve, working quickly while it is hot, back into a clean pot. Stir in the cream and season with salt, white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg.

Warm through gently without boiling, ladle into bowls, and finish with the reserved raw leaves and a thread of cream.

If using ham hock, put it in the pot with the water, bring to the boil, skim the grey foam that rises for the first few minutes, then lower to a simmer. If using confit duck, add it later at step 3, since it is already cooked.

Add the studded onion, garlic and bouquet garni to the ham-hock pot and simmer gently, covered, for 45 minutes.

Add the potatoes, carrots and turnips, and the confit duck if using instead of hock. Simmer a further 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender but still hold their shape.

Add the cabbage and beans and simmer a final 15 minutes, uncovered, until the cabbage is tender but not disintegrating. If using ham hock, lift it out, shred the meat off the bone discarding skin and fat, and return the meat to the pot.

Season with pepper and salt cautiously, since ham or duck confit both carry salt already. Serve very hot, ladled over a slice of dense bread in the bowl.

Warm the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion, fennel and leeks and cook, stirring, for 8 minutes until softened but not coloured. Add the garlic and cook a further minute.

Add the fish and bones and cook, turning and breaking them up roughly with the wooden spoon, for 5 minutes — this step, cooking the fish briefly before it stews, builds far more flavour than adding everything raw to the water at once.

Add the tomatoes, saffron, orange zest, bay and thyme, then the wine, and let it bubble for a minute. Pour in the water, bring to a simmer, and cook uncovered for 30 minutes, breaking up the fish further with the spoon as it softens, until the bones give easily and the liquid is deeply flavoured.

This is the crucial step: pass the entire contents of the pot — bones, heads and all — through a coarse sieve set over a clean pot, pressing very firmly with the back of a ladle to extract every drop of flavour and as much of the softened flesh as will pass through. Discard what remains in the sieve.

Return the strained soup to a gentle simmer, taste, and season with salt and a pinch of cayenne. It should be assertive — this is a soup meant to carry the rouille, not disappear beneath it.

Make the rouille: crush the extra garlic clove to a paste with salt, mash in the boiled potato, then whisk in the egg yolk. Build an emulsion exactly as for mayonnaise in Egg Recipes — oil added drop by drop at first, then in a thin stream — until thick, and season with cayenne.

Serve the soup very hot, with the croûtes spread thickly with rouille, floated on top or offered alongside, and grated Gruyère to scatter over.

Char the cut face of the unpeeled onion half hard in a dry heavy pan until near-black — this alone will deepen the consommé's colour to a proper amber without a drop of caramel or colouring added.

In a large bowl, combine the cold mince, egg whites, diced carrot, celery, leek, onion and tomatoes, the tomato purée and the bouquet garni. Mix thoroughly with your hand or a wooden spoon until well combined — this whole mixture is the clarification, or, once it sets, the raft.

Pour the cold stock into a wide, heavy pot. Add the clarification mixture and the charred onion, and stir once to distribute evenly through the liquid while it is still cold — this is the only stirring the pot receives for the rest of the recipe.

Set over medium heat and bring to a bare simmer slowly, stirring gently and occasionally only until you feel the mixture beginning to set — this takes 10–15 minutes. The moment it starts to form solid clumps, stop stirring entirely and do not touch it again.

As it continues to heat, the clarification mixture will rise to the surface as a solid raft, cracking slightly as it does. Lower the heat immediately to the barest possible simmer — a single lazy bubble breaking the surface every few seconds — and use the back of a ladle to open a small hole at one edge of the raft, about the size of a coin.

Simmer undisturbed for 45 minutes, basting the raft occasionally through the hole by ladling a little of the clear broth from below back over its top — this keeps the raft moist and working. Resist any urge to stir or push it down.

Line a large sieve with a clean, damp cloth and set it over a clean bowl or pot. Very gently, using two ladles, lift the raft aside — do not stir or press it — and ladle the clear broth beneath, one careful ladleful at a time, through the cloth-lined sieve. Discard the raft, which has given everything it has.

Taste the strained consommé and season with salt only — it needs almost nothing else if the stock and the raft were both good. Warm gently to serve; it should be crystal clear enough to read fine print through.